Loveshack Timber Framework

It is unbelievable that this is what it takes to keep our new house a "renovation" to enable us to keep the loveshack land in our new rebuilt home.  The wall has to stay...so the carpenters have to cut in and build around the old framework. There is no weight carried by the old framework, there is no old framework that will ever be seen when finished....you have to ask, what is the point in keeping it.?! But we are sticking to the law and doing what we are told. Its very exciting seeing the walls go up.

Out of the Ground

 

At last the steel works go up.

The steel went in last week - what a relief. First the uprights and then the cross beams. In order to carry the weight and make the spans, there were a couple of larger beams that are used in the centre of the building - essentially around the tv lounge, so the level of the ceiling will be slightly lower in this room and the powder room next to it. Height in the tv lounge will be approx 2.550, height elsewhere should be 2.65.    





Sand Regeneration

Always nice to see more sand on our beach. Check out the latest dump of Sand from Narrabeen lagoon.

storm water overflow

Here are some pictures of the most expensive unnecessary stormwater overflow management system in the country. Of all the places that you have NO PROBLEM with DRAINAGE it is in our sandy back yard. Our original cottage had no gutters and downpipes and we never had any puddles. The water runs away, of course. That also why we have great difficulty growing anything. Anyway, I am sure that the wise people at Warringah Council know better than any single Hydroengineer and better than all of those working on our site that tell me this is a waste of energy and money....

Love Shack before slab

Jimmy adding his two pence worth

Love Shack after slab. Makes a huge difference to the feel of the space.

windows

yuck. I hate comitting to aluminium windows. I always wanted beautiful  timber windows. I NEED beautiful timber windows for my Hamptons look. But the reality is that we cant have a house full of timber windows this close to the beach....we couldnt open or close the timber windows in the old house because they were stuck partially open and so we lived with the cold coming in and the warmth leaking out.... The weather is just too harsh. So Aluminium it is. However, on the internal north facing court yard, P the builder, has agreed that we can probably get away with timber and have some pretty little timber French doors with side lights. On the front of the house we will unashamedly copy the windows featured on the house on the Dream Home Ideas tab - also in timber. So hopefully with timber architraves and these few timber feature windows and doors, no one will notice the aluminum in the rest of the house....too much.......

Concrete Slab

And then, to catch completely up to date, we had the 1st of the concrete poured on Tuesday. It took all day as the concrete trucks were late. The kids and I turned up at 5pm ish thinking it would be all done and they were still pouring and levelling. Great guys - note the Tshirt, "I love concrete". We wrote our names in the corner of the garage...and I wrote I love CH. So corney I know but its the teenager coming out in me.

Foundations

Preparation for the foundations involved plumber and concreter coordinating as they took turns to finish off respective laying of pipes and steel framework.. ready for the concrete slab to be poured.

Digging underground

Once the piles were done, we had to dig out the ground under the future garage for the water tank, and start the underground plumbing and overflow drainage for the back yard. So messy. The sand makes it difficult as you walk around the holes fill back up with sand.... 

Peter (Geotech) found a piece of volcanic pumus from NZ over 30,000 yrs old under ground. I have it in a special place...

An email sent to me from my dad...a retired engineer by trade. He gets excited about these things...and this does explain well how they build these piles.

They don't just drill a hole and fill it with concrete. I saw them complete one pile, and then move to another. What a mess! Huge crawler crane moves around carrying a suspended tube, taller than a 3 story building, they place it (slowly lower it) vertically into the pre-drilled hole, which has an enormous hollow cylinder surround in it - sticking out above ground. The crawler crane messes up the ground - sand, splilled left over concrete, moveable concrete feeder pipes everywhere, steel reinforcing cylinders in the way, what a site.

And noisy as hell. You see, the concrete truck backs onto the site, delivers the fresh concrete out the back, drops it into another machine chute - a diesel pump, what a noise, which then pumps the concrete through a flexible pipe up to the top of the 3 story cylinder, which is now inside the hole. But the hole is not empty - it starts already full of a special 'mud fluid' which is in the pre-drilled hole to keep it 'open' - so it doesn't fall in(!). So they start to place the concrete AT THE BOTTOM of the hole, while another (!) pump pumps out the fluid as the concrete slowly rises inside the pile.

I saw one concrete truck finish, empty and leave, and another one arrive and take over.

When the hole is filled - it over-flows at the top. But the top concrete is poor quality, because of the 'mud fluid' (now not there - but now in a reserve big tank, for use again!)

Later, with the crane, they hitch to the top of the cylinder, and slowly drag it out - up that is. Drop it to one side. Now the wet concrete sinks down a bit, the top falls away. The reinforcing rods are now sticking out. They tell me that at the next stage, before pouring the big floor slab, they will jack out some more of the top of the new concrete -they only want the pile to come below the surface.

Oh my goodness.

I don't think this house will fall down,

I will be willing to go inside of it.

Originally we thought that we would need up to 25 concrete piles under the house down in the sand, to satisfy the building conditions of consent. This was reflective of the experience of some other houses along our beach stretch. As we are in a coastal zone, structures in the Zone of Adjustment must be supported on piles to withstand loads...So we had to get Geotechnical engineers (Croziers Peter and son Terry were very good) to provide soil tests down to 16m+ and to provide structural design for the piles. Thanks to our builder Paul and engineer Anthony, we have been able to re-design the structural engineering so that we reduced the number of piles to 8! This was a great savings on our budget and shows that a little bit of extra work up front with planning and smarts can really make a difference in a build.